


Symbiosis

by inelegantly (Lir)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Aftercare, Alien Biology, Armor, Bonding, Experimentation, Getting to Know Each Other, Large insertions, Military Training, Military Uniforms, Multiple Orgasms, Other, Overstimulation, Oviposition, Science Fiction, Sexual Exhaustion, Shapeshifting, Sounding, Tentacle Sex, Xenophilia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-12
Updated: 2016-02-12
Packaged: 2018-05-19 10:57:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5964724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lir/pseuds/inelegantly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Everyone needs to bond with their armor some way or another. It's not technology, not a machine, the thing you meet in there is a living, breathing creature same as you are. But it's not human, and that you can never forget. The best wisdom we can give you is, remember that it's only trying to understand you. The easier you make that, the better the bond, and the sooner you'll be back on the training floor."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Symbiosis

**Author's Note:**

  * For [heeroluva](https://archiveofourown.org/users/heeroluva/gifts).



> I saw your kinkiest of all kinky prompts, and took your pinch hit immediately. I hope this is what you were aiming for. (Please, let's be friends.)
> 
> The actual pairing I'm writing for is "Symbiotic Shapeshifting Alien Lifeform/Soldier" where the prompt for the fandom was "Before they can move forward with their military training, a cadet must successfully bond with the shapeshifting alien lifeform that will act as their armor, and be their constant companion for the rest of their life." I chose to combine it with the general prompt for a tentacle sex scenario, thus... All of those tags.

* * *

Before they walk Luca down to the trial chamber, the officers on base have a few words of advice.

"Talk to it," one of them tells him with a laugh, adding how, "nobody likes someone watching their back who can't even hold up a conversation."

"Remember to breathe," another tells him, thumping him on the back so hard the air gusts out of him. 

"And most of all," the last declares, "for once in your goddamn life don't bother watching your six, it's supposed to get up in there, what do you think protection is for?"

The three of them all guffaw heartily, and Luca is absolutely certain there's some joke going on that he's missing entirely. But they're good officers and they quickly collect themselves, offering a round of throat-clearing before Luca's sergeant and the captain fall into step to either side of him, escorting him down a rarely-used corridor of the main cadet training facility on base, down to where a short row of doors stands silent and removed. 

"It'll take as long as it takes," Luca's sergeant says, more soberly than before. "Don't try and rush things." 

The captain places a hand on Luca's shoulder, his rough, square palm providing a warm weight even with the fabric of Luca's work uniform resting underneath the man's fingers. It's a fatherly gesture, accompanied by the advice of, "Everyone needs to bond with their armor some way or another. It's not technology, not a machine, the thing you meet in there is a living, breathing creature same as you are. But it's not human, and that you can never forget. The best wisdom we can give you is, remember that it's only trying to understand you. The easier you make that, the better the bond, and the sooner you'll be back on the training floor." 

"Shouldn't be too hard for you," the sergeant jokes, injecting a little humor back into the conversation. "We all know you're pretty simple. Not a lot in here for that alien armor to figure out." 

He raps Luca lightly on the skull with his knuckles, and flashes Luca a grin. Despite himself, Luca finds himself grinning back. It's daunting, facing down the hugest task he'll take on during his cadet training. He's been aware this day was coming since he signed on with the army in the first place. But with his sergeant bullying him and the captain surveying him with a proud, paternal look, Luca concludes that the test cannot be so bad. 

"When you're done," the captain says, drawing his hand back from Luca's arm, "come find me, and we'll brief you on where your training goes from here." 

So saying, he presses his palm against a panel set into the wall and the entirety of the trial chamber door whooshes out of the way. The room beyond looks like nothing so much as the bunks used for conjugal visits between the officers and any non-bonded, temporary partners, and something about that sets a feeling to itching at the back of Luca's brain. 

"Go on," the captain tells him, nodding toward the chamber. 

Luca squares his shoulders, and walks inside.

* * *

"Uh, armor?" Luca calls out, after the door has swished shut behind him and he finds himself, to all appearances, alone in the room.

It had never occurred to Luca that he might not even be able to _identify_ the alien armor, but he had been informed of its shapeshifting properties, and as far as he can tell nothing in the room appears out of place. There's the bed, plushly outfitted and made with hospital corners; a low table beside it; a rug spread across the middle of the floor. At the other side of the room there stand two chairs, arranged to either side of a taller table. 

One of them is draped with a dress uniform jacket and Luca does a double-take, certain that hadn't been there when he did his first, cursory scan of the room. 

"Is that you?" Luca asks, feeling foolish even as he walks closer to the chair. "I guess it'd have to be, unless you're folded up in the bedside drawer. Or tucked underneath the bed sheets? How is this supposed to go?" 

The jacket is silent. That feels ordinary enough, going off all of Luca's previous experience. He reaches out to curl his fingers around the back of the collar, and an electric current courses up the length of his arm before he's done more than touch. 

Luca gasps, a soft, choked sound that catches in his throat, but the prickle over his skin is more warmth than pain and his training has been enough that he doesn't flinch back. His hand grips the top of the jacket and he pulls it off of the chair. 

"Do I put you on?" Luca wonders to himself. "Or what?" 

It seems stupid to do it over the uniform he has on, so Luca moves toward the bed, setting the dress uniform — alien? — jacket down and shrugging his own off his shoulders. There's a prickle of something against the inside of his skull, a crawling feeling that distracts him and before he thinks about it, he's pulling his undershirt off, too.

"Skin to skin," he mutters. "I guess that might be better?" 

With a fancy flourish he swings the jacket across his shoulders, settling it against his back and sliding his arms through the sleeves. There's a distinct weight to it, heavier than that of his own clothes, like it's made of some expensive fabric — brocade? Luca can't say what. It fits him as precisely as if it had been tailored, and before Luca can marvel at that over much, the shape of the garment melts even closer to his skin. 

It feels warm, like honey left out in the sun, warm and _sticky_ as soon as Luca makes the mistake of that comparison. The fabric adheres itself to his skin and squeezes gently at his flesh, and after a moment the strange sensation from before comes over him again, a pins and needles feeling from inside his own head. 

_Getting there,_ a voice whispers, smooth and neutral. _What's your name, human soldier?_

"Um... Luca," he manages to stammer, arms hanging strangely at his sides. "Uh, what's yours?" 

_We don't often have those,_ the armor explains. _Not in the impermeable sense you humans do. But I'll become more immutable, won't I? You can call me 'Avens.'_

"Avens," Luca echoes, speaking the name aloud. "Guess that's alien enough." 

The crawling feeling creeps across his brain again, and something instinctual inside of Luca assures him that the alien is _laughing._

_Take off your pants,_ it says. _And the boots, socks, all of it. I need to become familiar with your skin, with your shape._

It's armor, meant to fit snugly and securely to his body, so Luca can form no reasonable objection to the request. He strips perfunctorily, pulling off first the boots, then his socks, then standing so he can more easily unfasten his belt and push his pants down from the waist. They fall to the floor and good military training compels Luca to reach down and grab them, to fold all his things and pile them neatly on the table beside the bed. 

_Better,_ the voice in his head whispers. _Better, better._

He can feel the thing melting down his chest, running apart like the fabric has gone to liquid wax and the wax has begun to drip down his thighs. There's still a stickiness to it, tacky like rubber glue, as it pours itself into slime trails that course down his body and bunch up into fat, stringy threads. After a moment's hesitation Luca resumes his seat on the bed, only giving the creature opportunity to pool itself into his lap. 

It feels strange, puddling on top of his bare cock, strange and cooler than he was expecting. It shifts and flows, vibrating like jello, and Luca bites his lip lest he make a less than dignified sound. 

_Is that something humans like?_ its cool, clinical voice asks him. _I don't believe that was a reaction of pain._

"N-No," Luca agrees and suddenly he's nervous, embarrassed. He remembers his captain explaining how it just wants to _understand_ him, but the last thing he wants to do is explain the nature of human arousal responses. 

_I can do it again,_ the alien points out. _I don't mind._

Luca is prepared to decline, his mouth opening, the words already at the tip of his tongue. The armor doesn't give him the chance. It's shifting on his lap, rippling around him, coaxing his cock into stiffening further and beginning to poke up into the open air. The alien raises a glob of itself upwards, and part of Luca is certain it is watching him. 

_It's hot,_ the alien — armor — _Avens_ comments, pulling up another tendril of its body with which to prod at Luca's cock. Thoughtfully, as if more to itself than to Luca, it adds: _I like that._

Luca's cock gives a little twitch, and he's blindsided by the horrifying realization that _he likes the praise._

_Your heart rate is elevating,_ Avens points out. _Though it seems within the range of ordinary physiological response, when compared with those levels I've mapped out for you already. Shall we test it further?_

Luca breathes in, sharp, and doesn't say no. 

It undulates around him, rippling up and down the length of Luca's cock, and much as he tries to keep himself quiet the noises he's stifling won't stay lodged within his throat. His breath comes faster, rougher, speeding up as the alien moves even quicker, as that presence inside his head flattens out into nothing more complicated than a long, self-satisfied hum. Luca is almost surprised, when his breath catches and he cries out and comes with a jolt and a shudder. 

He looks down at his lap, where the milky puddle of his jizz is sinking into the deep, dress-uniform-blue of the thing, melting away like it's being absorbed. The humming in his head keeps going, building in strength and resonating like a cat's thrumming purr. 

_What else is in there,_ Avens wonders to itself, as part of its body pushes at the underside of Luca's cock to keep it pointed up. Another tendril stretches itself out, narrowing, narrowing further, and it takes Luca's pleasure-fogged brain far, far too long to realize that no, no, it means to—

The tendril curls back around, pushing at Luca's slit where the rest of its body is holding Luca's cock steady, pushing itself _in_ and suddenly it doesn't feel so much like liquid, like jello. It firms as it pushes, solidifying until its texture is more the cool, smooth feel of metal, presses that unyielding length of itself into the opening of Luca's urethra. 

He hisses, and tries to squirm back, wriggling across the bed until his back hits the wall. But the thing is puddled on his lap and sticking to his skin; no matter how Luca squirms away from it the result remains the same. And it isn't so bad at first, having a rod of the creature slid into his dick, isn't bad until it makes itself _wider,_ stretches him open _further._

Luca hisses again, a discomfited, _tsssk, tsssk, tssssk_ sound, until abruptly it hits his prostate from the inside and Luca responds with a hoarse shout. 

_Good?_ it asks him, clinical, curious. It pulls the rod of itself back, pushes it in again, prods at Luca repeatedly to the sound of echoing groans that come with each renewed touch. _You sound good._

"How would you know!" Luca gasps, in between his shaking and his body's shudders. 

_I'm not sure,_ Avens admits. _It's only a feeling I have. I like it._

It pushes itself up, expanding all at once, the great glob of its body contorting and stretching in midair. The singular tendril inside of Luca hasn't withdrawn but more sprout from its central nexus, fatter and thicker, raising up to press at his shoulders and push him into the bed. 

For a moment, it's animalistic, curved in a way that resembles nothing so much as a hunching back, a back that's rapidly sprouting tendrils in a dozen different directions. The humming in Luca's head is building again, rising to a near-deafening, delighted thrum. 

_There's more,_ Avens says, and Luca can feel several of the tendrils — tentacles — pushing his knees apart. One trails down between his legs, pressing and prodding behind his balls. _There's more, there's more, there's another void here._

"I'm not a toy," Luca tells it, weakly, but the entire basis for the protest feels long beside the point. 

_Aren't you?_ Avens asks him. _There's still much of you to figure out. We're going to be playing together a long time, you and I. We may as well become familiar._

Luca isn't given time to digest that. The tentacle between his legs pushes _up_ all at once, and several inches of its length press into Luca, past his hole, despite the presence of resistance. He has the thought, distantly, that at least it thought to make itself slippery. The rest of him is shouting as his hips hitch up from the bed. 

_Perhaps that was a bit too fast,_ Avens ponders, and Luca begins, uncontrollably, to laugh. 

His hysterics don't seem to deter it. The alien presses further into Luca, moving in deeper, stretching him wider. He feels feel, so full, _too_ full, as the creature pours more and more of itself into him, as Luca realizes that its seeing just how much of him there is to fill up, as he realizes that it will be quite a while before his body forces it to stop. The pressure builds in his gut, low and insistent, and Luca reaches his hands down to press fretfully at his belly from the outside. 

_There's so much space,_ Avens wonders inside his head. _You are very elastic._

"We're not..." Luca starts to say, gasping, groaning. His back arches from the bed involuntarily and he realizes that tendril is still inside his dick, realizes it when it presses again to his prostate and he moans before melting again to the mattress. "We're not meant to be stretched this way, not usually." 

_Oh,_ Avens says. Then: _But I am being careful. I really must determine the limits of your physical capabilities, if I am to protect you within a reasonable bound of stresses and strain._

It's startlingly logical, for a creature that has stuffed so much of itself up Luca's asshole that his belly is bulging beneath his grasping hands. He laughs again, resuming from where he'd left off, but as much as it terrifies him to see his body manipulated, distorted, nothing Avens has done to him is so intense that Luca might say it _hurts._

_I am doing my best,_ Avens says, and Luca thinks that maybe the alien sounds _petulant._

His cock is hard again, Luca realizes at some length. He hadn't even noticed it happening, overwhelmed as he was by sensations and stimulation elsewhere, but it's stiffened around the tendril shoved inside it and has brought itself to Luca's attention because suddenly it _aches._

"I'm..." Luca starts to say. He wets his lips, clears his throat, shifts nervously on the bed because the words he wants to speak are heavy on his tongue. "Could you... That is...." 

He realizes his hands are unoccupied, free, and reaches one down to curl around his cock. He tugs at it, quick strokes that drag the insides of his urethra up and down the intrusion stuffed into it, whines through his teeth at the way that feels. It's strange, intense, but not entirely unpleasant; Luca is beyond the point of protesting and simply rolls with what he's given, jerking himself off around the alien tentacle shoved inside his dick. 

_Did you want something?_ Avens asks, its even voice striking Luca as being _far_ too polite. 

Embarrassment floods him again, at the puzzle that is explaining to an alien what he needs, why he wants it. There's a whole profusion of its tentacles floating around his head and Luca glances away from them, mutters out lowly, "I wouldn't mind if you really fucked me." 

He's aware on some level of just how closely their brains have linked, realizes that it's ridiculous to try and _tell_ it anything when he can show it just as well. He pictures in his mind's eye the thick, squirming protrusion that's been shoved into him, inserted until he's stretched and straining but then _left_ there, maddeningly still. He pictures it moving, and suddenly, Avens gets the idea. 

He feels the length of Avens retracting all at once, yanking out of him like a rubber band that's been snapped. He's never given the chance to feel properly empty. The last handful of inches are still inside of him, squirming, reshaping, into what Luca can only assume is a more phallic-like configuration — or if not that, a _fatter_ one, from the sensation of burning he gets as his hole is stretched all the wider.

His hand stutters on his cock and stills in its jerking, and all at once Avens begins to thrust. 

For something with no body, no real way to get purchase and nothing Luca can see as leverage, Avens pounds into him with surprising force. Its version of fucking is a quick, heavy pistoning, each thrust achieving the same depth and coming with the same vigor. The motion of it rocks Luca into the bed, plows him flat so that his arms fall by his side and his mouth sags open and he hears, as if from a great distance, his body making sounds that are utterly beyond him to place. They come out as one long moan, punctuated irregularly by what Luca fears might be _crying._

He thinks he comes, but there's a tentacle shoved in his dick, and Avens is still moving, and he cannot be sure. 

He thinks he blacks out, for a minute there. One moment he's moaning and whining and sobbing through his teeth, clutching at the bed sheets with white-fingered hands and pushing his hips down, rhythmically, against the thing that's fucking him. The next, his vision whites out, and he knows only the static-y hum that's ringing in his ears. 

Luca comes back to himself, slowly, and the hum resolves itself into Avens' increasingly-familiar, self-satisfied thrum. Luca realizes that the thrusting has stopped. As he stares down at himself, the tentacle wormed into his cock slowly pulls itself out, slick and dripping with what _must_ be Luca's come, and the foreign presence in Luca's mind feels _so disgustingly proud._

_I want to put something in here,_ Avens says, as the tentacle stretching out Luca's asshole slowly begins to withdraw. Before he's empty, though, it splits apart into tiny tendrils, making certain the gaping gap of Luca's hole is kept stretched open, yawning wide. _It feels right._

" _What_ kind of something?" Luca asks it, voice coming out soft, body announcing through that how deeply it is tired. 

One of the tentacles curls up toward Luca, hovering in view of his face. The end bulges out, goes round, forms itself into an unmistakably egg-like shape. 

_Something I can leave in there,_ Avens informs him, with deep, relishing satisfaction. 

And tired as he is, Luca never thinks to protest. As much as he can think about it, it sounds like a brilliant idea. 

"Go ahead," he says, waving one hand weakly and without lifting it more than an inch from the bed. "I don't mind." 

Several of Avens' tentacles curl around his legs, pulling them farther apart and holding them out of the way. Another winds around his cock and loops down beneath his balls, drawing the entire soft shape of his genitalia up and away from where multiple smaller tentacles are prodding at his hole. They pull him open, each from a different direction, and at that point Luca is used enough to the stretch that it doesn't even burn. 

_You're so warm,_ Avens says, gentle in his head. Its voice has changed, gotten mellower, and part of Luca thinks, _it sounds as if it's fond._

It pulls the tentacle with the protrusion down between his legs, pushes the round shape of it up inside Luca with unexpected ease. His body is completely relaxed, pliant; the resistance from his muscles is borderline nonexistent. When the tentacle pulls back out it's shriveled, shortened, and the glimpse Luca catches of that assures him, that egg-like bulb has been left inside. 

He isn't sure he can feel it, not after the first insertion, nor after the second. Avens is patient and meticulous, blooming out perfectly spherical extensions of itself and nudging them up inside Luca with loving care. He isn't certain about the third one, or the fourth, but by the fifth that feeling of building fullness is undeniably back. Each egg is small enough alone not to be troublesome but the cache of them stretches Luca wider and wider, makes him ache and start to pant as if enduring it is an exertion. 

Luca realizes, distantly, that his dick is once again stirring to life where it's been cradled. 

One of Aven's tentacles is wrapped all around it, packaging it up into a squashed little bundle. But as the fatigue from his last orgasm drains from Luca's bones and the pressure from the eggs sends new sparks of sensation darting across Luca's nerves, as that happens he can't help but shift, and raise his hips, and push his cock against the giving flesh that is restricting it. 

Avens loosens its hold, and gives Luca's cock a gentle stroke. He shudders, back arching, proving to be more sensitive than he realizes. He can see the budding swell of his stomach, swallows nervously because it's too much, too much, he's worn right through and still he's stuffed fuller yet. 

"How many..." Luca starts to ask, the simple words slurring noticeably together. "How much more are you going to do?" 

_I don't know,_ Avens says, too honest. _Isn't it interesting? I haven't yet found the limit of what you can take._

It's still stroking over his cock, jerking him off slowly but surely, yet the feeling of that touch is bringing Luca no relief. The weight of the eggs inside him presses heavy on his internal walls, stretches him near to bursting, fills him with a pressure that is foreign and consuming. His cock aches and he wants to get off, feels the pressure pushing at his groin as if something is coursing up _through_ him. 

Luca gives a little cry, and feels something dribble out, hot, from the head of his cock. It comes in little spurts and starts, dripping down the length of him and puddling in the creases where his thighs join his body. There's another little spurt, and another, Luca spending himself and wondering distantly why he still doesn't have _relief,_ until it hits him with mortifying clarity that somehow he has pissed himself. 

He slaps his hands up to cover his face, embarrassed beyond reason, and Avens finally relaxes the hold it has on Luca's legs, holding his thighs apart. 

_That may be enough,_ Avens comments. _It doesn't seem to be a desirable response._

And Luca laughs, despairing and almost fond, too tired to be anything more than dully humiliated over how he's lost control of his body. And has he lost it, really? Or given it away, offered to Avens in the face of the alien's careful, thorough manipulation? 

"I didn't..." Luca starts to say, waving vaguely down at himself where his dick is still straining and red. He didn't get off. He's lost. He doesn't know what to do. 

Avens' tentacles wander up over his body, gently tracing over his ribs, along his sides, up across his chest. There's nothing sticky about them now; the tip of each tentacle is smooth and cool, each with a faint, springy give to the texture. They brush across Luca's nipples and there they press down, shocking Luca with how sensitive his body remains. He arches up from the bed, cries out, comes hard enough that even though it's the third time in an evening his release shoots out as high as his sternum. 

Luca sinks back again to the bed, and he feels so exhausted he could weep. 

_Rest,_ Avens whispers, the total of its tentacles melting back to fall against Luca's body like rain. 

The alien pulls itself together, coalescing back into one consolidated lump and spreading itself out thin across Luca's skin. It's warm, and a little bit tacky, but Luca is used to that now. It covers him like a blanket and Luca finds he cannot ignore the directive he's been given. He's worn all the way out, stretched open and wrung dry and left lying there in his own sweat and jizz, though he suspects Avens is busily absorbing both of those bodily products into itself. Luca has nothing left to give. 

As Avens has bid him, he allows himself to drift, peacefully, off to sleep.

* * *

Luca is unfathomably sore, when he awakens.

All of his muscles have knotted into hard little masses of pain and there's a weight on his chest, warm and shifting, vibrating just enough to evoke sleepy thoughts of a cat's purr. The previous day's activities begin to come back to him. Luca isn't awake enough yet to have any opinions on them.

It all feels a little unreal, but the ache in his bones is too persistent for him to ignore, as is the tenseness in his gut, the skin of his stomach stretched taut across an unnatural fullness. _Oh,_ he thinks, _the eggs._ There's a small part of him that screams in abject horror at the thought; the rest of him is too exhausted, too practical, and can't see the worth to shouting in any more dedicated a way than that. 

_You're awake._ the voice in his head says. It feels more familiar, somehow, more like the voice of his conscience now than like an external entity whispering in his ear. _We have more to do._

Luca makes an unintelligible groan, then makes a halfhearted attempt to roll over on the bed. His over-full belly immediately protests the action, and he flops weakly again onto his back. 

_As I was saying,_ Avens continues, mental voice precise, amused, _Unless you were planning a proper incubation, we'd best be quick. Before your body begins to absorb them._

"My... _What_?" Luca asks. The horror is definitely beginning to creep into his voice. 

_Absorb them,_ Avens repeats. _We're not precisely compatible in a breeding sense, you and I. There's genetic material in every bit of my species, to be sure, but it will be strange to your tissues, volatile. And as your, hmm, passages, are intended for digestion rather than birth, I've deduced that your body will begin breaking down those bits of me, rather than retaining them. I hadn't realized this before. It's curious._

Luca hadn't been counting on an impromptu biology lesson, and doesn't find the information anything other than dully horrifying. His eyes roll back, staring blankly up at the ceiling. Now that he's slept and the heat of the moment has passed, his memories of the night before mortify him. Perhaps if he wills it strongly enough, he will simply melt into the mattress of the bed he's lying on, and won't have to deal with any of them. 

Avens isn't about to let him get away with that. 

There's a shifting over his sternum, the warm puddle of vibrating alien pouring itself lower down his chest and abdomen. Avens' body splits in two, branching off arms of itself to curl around the bulk of his belly and rejoin beneath it, wrapping around his cock and running over it lightly. Luca makes a disapproving groan. 

"Mm goin' back to sleep," he mumbles, throwing one arm over his face. If he can't see it, he can avoid dealing with it.

Unfortunately he can still _feel_ it, the cool, springy tentacles stroking coaxingly over his cock, working him slowly, patiently to arousal, as if simply getting Luca back into such a state will solve all of his problems with reticence. He does his best to ignore it, mentally digging in his heels, but the touch is light and teasing and he can't help but react to that, stiffening beneath the persistent attentions. 

Luca makes another aggrieved sound, this one considerably muffled by the arm pressed over his face. He reaches a hand down, shoving vaguely at his cock in an effort to make it go down. He's rougher with himself than Avens has been, and the only result is him drawing air in through his teeth in a hiss. He's more sensitive still than he realized, after his treatment the night before. 

"What do you want from me?" he finally asks, peevish, accepting that he will no longer escape it. 

_Push them out,_ Avens supplies. _I'll help you._

It draws itself up, the bulk of its mutable body seeming to grow as it rises over Luca's chest and splits apart into a dozen filaments, into tentacles enough that it can wind two each under each of Luca's thighs. It tucks them underneath his knees and draws his legs up, spreading them apart so he's held in a position that feels far too similar to that of a woman birthing a child. Luca swallows thickly, nervously. 

The new position puts more pressure on his stomach, on his bladder, makes him shift anxiously on the bed and whine with his discomfort. His erection flags, but Avens is there to tend to it, manipulating his cock just as deftly as it manipulates the rest of him. 

He feels stretched too wide, legs held open, asshole still gaping loosely, the muscles around it giving weak little pulses as if trying to pinch shut and protect him. It's to no use. The pressure begins to nauseate him and he _tries_ to push the things inside of him out, commands his muscles to tense and shove, but the process feels unfamiliar, strange. His heartbeat is speeding up, faster, faster, quickening with his nerves and with the inability to get his body to do what he _needs_ and Luca just wants the things _out,_ out of him as fast as possible—

He shouts, as a narrow tentacle plunges all at once down the slit of his cock. It's too fast, no warning, and his body clamps down in reaction, except— it's not _down_ that it clamps, precisely, and with an audible wet popping sound something shoots across the bed— shoots as far as it can, before one of Avens' tentacles darts out to grab it. 

Luca cranes his neck up, just enough to see the smooth, round shape, slick after being inside his body. 

Calmly, casually, Avens begins to absorb it back into itself. It doesn't happen all at once; Luca is given a long minute to watch the egg melt like paraffin wax onto the tentacle, dripping over it with an entirely different viscosity until the fluid of the thing is absorbed back into Aven's body. There's still a tentacle down Luca's urethra. He sucks in air, nervous, heart shuddering, and whimpers softly between pressed-shut lips. 

_You're doing fine,_ Avens reassures him. The words come as little comfort. 

He realizes, dimly, horrifically, that Avens is manipulating him from the inside. The tentacle in his dick worms down toward his bladder, pushing and prodding at the eggs through his body. The poking shocks his body into the muscle contractions Luca couldn't force it to make on his own, and this time he feels it, as another of the eggs is worked slowly down, down toward the pulsing point of his hole. 

Luca is loose, but he isn't that loose. Going slower, he swears he can feel the entire surface of the thing, pushing against his entrance from the inside, stretching him open wider. He hisses and sucks air through his teeth, cringing at how _sensitive_ he is, at how the feeling sends funny little shivers shuddering up his spine, teeny electric jolts he cannot entirely convince himself he doesn't enjoy. He pushes again, and once more, and with a third try the egg pops free, only to be caught deftly by yet another tentacle. 

It gets easier, by the third repetition. 

Avens' voice is back in his head, murmuring soothingly to him with platitudes and reassurances. As a comfort they do little, but they blend together into an unobjectionable background narration, grounding in how Luca can count on it to continue. He hadn't thought the alien much for this sort of kindness, not before, and a distant part of him wonders what that _means,_ wonders if its learning how to better imitate human social habits. 

It plunges that tentacle again down Luca's cock and distracted as he is, that shocks him into shooting another of the eggs free to be reclaimed. 

He's panting at that point, strained with the exertion of commanding his muscles to push and expel, dizzy with his nerves over letting Avens manipulate him, weak with his desire to simply be done. It becomes harder to push but it feels as if the things are helping him, wandering easily toward their exit through no effort of Luca's own. 

He aches, both in his muscles and between his legs, his dick twitching in the grasp of the tentacles wrapped around it. Avens coaxes his body into working, pushing, forcing all the eggs out, strings him along until he's sheened with sweat and breathless with the effort, until his belly shrinks and he sprawls flattened against the mattress. 

Luca's cock is still hard but Avens hasn't forgotten that, the tentacle pushed into it withdrawing, the one wrapped around it insistently pulling. There's little fanfare to it, when Luca comes. It's pulled out of him, a theft as much as it is a release. 

Avens seems fatter for it, though it only ought to have taken back in parts of itself it had given up. It weighs heavier on Luca's chest, to his senses, round and swollen and somehow glistening, and though it had no face, to Luca's mind it looked nothing so much as _smug._

_You really are very resilient,_ it confides to him, sounding slow and sated. _It's a good quality for a soldier, and a good match for someone such as me._

"Is this all of it?" Luca asks. "The bonding? Or are you going to do more of this, do this again?" 

_Do you want to?_ Avens asks. 

Luca's only reply is a shout, wordless in his outrage. For a moment he's breathless, indignant, but then the facade starts to fall, with Luca too tired to hold it up. He rolls his gaze up toward the ceiling, embarrassed and unsure how to hide, from a creature he isn't entirely certain has eyes. 

_This will be enough,_ Avens continues, as if Luca's response really is answer enough. _I can protect this body, from what I've learned, from what I now know. But I could always know more._

Luca can feel the heat in his cheeks, can feel the sensation of burning. The idea makes him nervous, embarrassed. It makes his dick give a feeble twitch from where it's tucked against his belly, stirring with the merest beginnings of traitorous interest. He's sore, more sore than he's ever been, and he's a cadet in an elite armed forces program, put through rigorous training every day. He isn't certain he dislikes it. 

"I wasn't sure what bonding entailed," Luca admits, tired enough that his thoughts are drifting and his mind sees no reason not to share them. "Before this, I mean. I wouldn't know if we'd done it well enough."

 _Oh yes,_ Avens says, reassuring him. _We've done it very well indeed._

"Good," Luca says, vaguely. "Oughtn't I to go back to bed? M'tired, still." 

Avens makes a low humming noise that Luca realizes only belatedly is purely in his head, purrs slow pleasure into his brain while spreading slowly out across his chest. Luca knows that it's meant to be armor, a covering for his body that's clever in how it protects him, but since first seeing it as a jacket he'd given little thought to how an alien might perform that task. Avens melts across him, spreading itself out over each of his limbs and wrapping around him like a second skin.

 _Go to sleep,_ it tells him then, when it has blanketed him from his ankles up to his throat, and from his throat down to his wrists. _When you wake, we'll go to your commander, and inform him of our success._

This time, Luca succeeds in rolling over, though his stomach is still sore and feels as if it may still be distended. He has the presence of mind to pull the blankets up over himself, before again surrendering to sleep.

* * *

Back in his work uniform, Luca looks much the same as when his captain showed him to the trial chamber door. It feels as if an eternity has passed since then, though Luca suspects it's been a day at most. Hunger hasn't yet overwhelmed him, and in the back of his brain, he suspects that his new alien companion may have had something to do with that as well.

Luca looks no different, save for the peek of something darkly blue showing above the collar of his uniform, slick like neoprene but not made of any earthly fabric. Luca tugs absently at it as he walks down the hall, pulling the garment away from his neck. It doesn't snap, simply oozing back toward Luca's skin rather than contracting with a rubber band twang. 

Luca knocks on the door to his captain's office, left waiting only a moment before a voice from within calls him inside. 

"I've finished," he announces. 

Standing before the captain's desk, back straight, arms folded up neatly behind it, Luca can't help but wonder whether what he's said is strictly true. There's a whisper in the back of his head that wonders with him, though it's sounding less and less like somebody else's voice. 

"Ah," his captain says. "Good." There's a momentary pause, as the man looks him over with a critical eye. It's routine, perfunctory, sizing him up for his merits as a soldier, and surely Luca imagines it, when that impartial look softens briefly with concern. "Let's talk about your continuing training." 

_There's always more to learn,_ that increasingly-familiar voice whispers in Luca's head, but he's growing used to it, and doesn't in any way outwardly respond. 

"Of course," Luca agrees, "I'll do whatever it takes to succeed." 

The strange look in the captain's eye fades, and he favors Luca with another of his more paternal smiles. "That's what all the best soldiers say, my boy. You've been putting in the work for it. Only you can say whether it's paid off." 

"I think it has," Luca says, as the voice in his head purrs smug agreement. "In some way or another."

* * *


End file.
